West Indies and Australia continue their T20 series on Saturday evening less than 24 hours after a remarkable opening match in which West Indies somehow came out on top despite Australia dominating for much of the contest.
That leaves the home side with the chance to go two up with three to play in the series while Australia need to win here to level things up. More importantly it is another chance for both teams to continue to prepare for the World T20 later in the year.
West Indies
You would have to say that for the better part of 30 overs it was a dismal display from West Indies but much of that will be forgotten now after they battled back superbly to come out on top in the opening match. They will look to build on that result but shouldn’t allow it to paper over some pretty large cracks which were exposed once again. They can get away with those in matches like these where the end picture doesn’t really matter but come the World T20 things might be different.
West Indies’ early batting display was terrible in that first game. It was like the only scoring method was a six and nothing else was acceptable. If they are going to be a force moving forward in this format they have to start rotating the strike through the powerplay. They might have lots of power in their batting but in the UAE they’ll do well to hit sixes all the time. It isn’t like they need to go ballistic all the time either because as we saw in that first game they don’t need huge scores to defend.
Australia
I doubt Australia would have got much sleep on Friday night after the way they literally tossed the first game away. They didn’t deserve to be on the losing side and for much of the contest there was no way they were going to be but then out of nowhere a brain fade developed within their batsmen and nobody could give provide the calmness needed to get them home in a run chase where less than a run a ball was needed for much of it.
The good thing for Australia was that their bowling attack looked in good order, although whether that remains the case if West Indies bat a bit smarter at the top of the innings remains to be seen. They look to have a balanced side but I guess the one thing they lack is someone who can take their ego out of the equation and just get the score to something acceptable rather than just look to hit it as far as they can and hole out like they did in that opening match.
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Team News
Kieron Pollard missed the opening match with the legacy of his hamstring twinge in the last game against South Africa and you wouldn’t have thought 24 hours will make much difference to that. West Indies might choose to bring Sheldon Cottrell back into the side for Fidel Edwards.
Australia might look to rotate their bowlers and see what resources they have although Josh Hazlewood was superb in the first game which might stop that from happening. Alex Carey and Ashton Turner will hope to come into the batting department.
Betting
I took over 14.5 sixes in the opening match and somehow despite the very indifferent batting that was on show we scrambled up to the 15 we needed. I’m happy to take the same bet again because I don’t think both sides can bat as sloppily as they did in the opening match again. In the series with South Africa recently we saw the pitches die as they went along but the dew in St Lucia will mean that won’t happen here so we don’t have that to worry about.
When you consider that Evin Lewis, Chris Gayle, Nicholas Pooran and Aaron Finch – all huge hitters of a cricket ball – didn’t hit a single six in the first match then there is a lot more to come here. Those four don’t miss out very often so we should expect one of them to come off here if not a couple more of them. We saw in that first game that the ground isn’t particularly big so as long as some more brain cells are engaged in the batting departments I expect this line to be cleared once again.
Tips
Back Over 14.5 sixes for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Coral
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